


Many Happy Returns

by sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Co-Bathing, Don’t copy to another site, First Kiss, Frottage, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 16:23:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17832014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/pseuds/sussexbound
Summary: One did not surprise Sherlock Holmes on his birthday.  It was not his ‘thing’. It was rarely appreciated.  John knows this.  He knows, but…Tomorrow Sherlock turns forty-six.  It isn’t a particularly momentous birthday.  No one does something special when you turn forty-six.  It’s just a birthday like any other, and by that age, usually one you would rather forget.But John can’t forget.The year Sherlock had turned forty-five had been as difficult for John as it had for Sherlock.  Sherlock who had always shone so bright that John had just assumed he’d live forever was finally starting to show his age.  He couldn’t quite keep the long hours he used to.  He couldn’t eat takeaway five nights in a row without paying the price.  He was getting wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and small bags beneath them, and had started to get grey in his hair, mostly at his temples.All those things only made John love him more, but therein lies the problem, and the source of all his current turmoil.John loves Sherlock.





	Many Happy Returns

One does not surprise Sherlock Holmes.

Last year was his forty-fifth birthday.Mrs. Hudson had attempted to plan a surprise party, despite the fact that John warned her it would be a bad idea, not to Sherlock’s liking, that he’d figure it out within a day.Etc., etc….

Two days after she began her plotting Sherlock had shown up in John’s room in the wee hours of the morning looking, from the bags under his eyes and the wild state of his hair, like he had been up pacing half the night.

“She means well, but I would prefer she didn’t…”

John had sighed and propped himself up on one elbow, before patting the mattress beside him, and Sherlock had sat down, hands and the sides of his dressing gown folded primly in his lap.

“I told her you’d figure it out.I told her it’s not your thing.You know how she gets.”

“Everyone will be there, I suppose.”

“Imagine so.”

Sherlock had sighed heavily, and John had reached out to give his forearm a squeeze.“I’ll let you in on all the secrets, and I’ll stick close during the party, and if you want to invent some case in the middle to duck out, I’m not going to stop you.You know I’m not the biggest fan of that sort of thing either.”

This had seemed to satisfy him in the moment, but in the end he never showed up.They’d eaten the food, and everyone had laughed, and good-heartedly declared, ‘how Sherlock!’ and they’d carried on. 

The next week there had been flowers and take-away delivered, and even some contractors called in to repaper Mrs. Hudson’s lounge—Sherlock doing his penance, of course, but still…One did not surprise Sherlock Holmes on his birthday.It was not his ‘thing’. It was rarely appreciated.John knows this.He knows, but…

Tomorrow Sherlock turns forty-six.It isn’t a particularly momentous birthday.No one does something special when you turn forty-six.It’s just a birthday like any other, and by that age, usually one you would rather forget.

But John can’t forget.

The year Sherlock had turned forty-five had been as difficult for John as it had for Sherlock.Sherlock who had always shone so bright that John had just assumed he’d live forever was finally starting to show his age.He couldn’t quite keep the long hours he used to.He couldn’t eat takeaway five nights in a row without paying the price.He was getting wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and small bags beneath them, and had started to get grey in his hair, mostly at his temples.

All those things only made John love him more, but therein lies the problem, and the source of all his current turmoil.

John loves Sherlock.

He loves him more than he has ever loved another human being, and he’s never said.He doesn’t know how to even start that conversation, and the clock is ticking.

John turns fifty in a few months, and he’d rather not think about that.He thinks about his family.Mum dead at 57 from cancer.Dad dead the year before at 62.His gram on his mum’s side had lived to be 69, and that had seemed a big deal.Watson’s don’t grow old. 

John may only have a decade left, and every second that goes by without him telling Sherlock the truth seems like one second too many.They have started to weigh him down, each one sucking a little of the life he has left with unruly, unbearable regret.He’s suffocating beneath the weight of them.

It’s now or never.Sherlock’s forty-sixth birthday is tomorrow and he’s made a reservation for them at Angelo’s, he’ll order Sherlock’s favourites, he’ll ask for a candle, he’s going to say something.He’s promised himself.If—if it ends everything, then so be it, but at least he won’t have to live with the regret.

* * *

 

John wakes up on January 6th in a cold sweat. 

Terrible, horrible idea.What could he have been thinking.It could end everything.It could.And—what would John do then?Where would he go?Sherlock has been his whole life for thirteen years.That’s longer than most marriages John knows of, including his own short lived and disastrous one, a few years prior.They share a flat, a career, a life.If John says something and it ruins everything, then…

In the end, all his carefully laid dinner plans are ruined anyway.

Sherlock decides that his forty-sixth birthday is the perfect time to take a case he has no business taking, and to wrap it up by falling into the Thames.

In January.

Well below freezing.

He is predictably belligerent to the paramedics.He’s frozen through.He is trembling so hard on the way home in the cab that John fears he might being inching up on hypothermia.John is furious.Sherlock is a terror.The whole night is a bust.

“You’re getting in a bath.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Now!”John uses his Captain John H. Watson voice, the one that never fails to have an impact.It works as predicted.Sherlock’s spine straightens, he blinks, his cheeks pink, and his face takes on the sort of pliant, sheepish expression that is usually reserved for his mother’s more demonstrative tangents. 

He doesn’t say another word, just hurries down the hallway and shuts himself in the loo.

John is glad for the space.He needs to take a breath, to cool down.

He has hated everything about the night, thus far, from their cancelled dinner plans, to Sherlock running after their suspect and leaving John panting and limping after him in the driving, icy rain.He feels useless.He feels small, and weak, and old, and worst of all, he feels a right coward at the slight relief he feels over not having to say those three words after all.

Next year, maybe.

Sherlock is slamming cupboard doors in the loo.There’s a clatter of something falling into the empty tub, and then a low, fierce ejaculation of frustration.It’s hard to tell all the way out in the lounge, but it almost sounds like profanity.John’s brows ascend to his fringe.

He walks down the hallway and taps on the door with one knuckle.“Here, you okay?”

“Go away, John!”Bellowed from the other side of the door.

John sighs.“Right.Fine.Never mind me and my concern.I only fished your ungrateful arse out of the Thames in the middle of the bloody night, in the middle of fucking January, but okay.”

There’s silence on the other side of the door.

“You’re angry.”

“You’re bloody well right, I am!”John sucks in a breath through his nose, holds it, exhales slowly.“I am.You have got to stop running off like that, for fuck’s sake.”

“He was getting away.It’s not my fault you can’t keep…”

Sherlock seems to catch himself, but John has barged through the door before he even realises what he’s doing.“Yeah, you might want to shut up right…”

Sherlock is naked.Stark naked.

If it had been Sherlock barging in on John in such a fashion, John would have instinctually moved to cover himself, but Sherlock is just standing there, shivering, pale skin covered in gooseflesh, nipples peaked, cock small, and shrunken, drawn up and seeking out the heat at Sherlock’s core.It’s that small detail that finally breaks through the momentary fog of John’s shock, and causes a flood of fond warmth to burst in his chest.

He pulls his eyes away, to look up at Sherlock’s face again, only to find that his cheeks have gone florid.

“I’m cold.”Sherlock says, small and somewhat defensive.

John fails at biting back a grin.“Right.Obviously.”He strides over to the tub, fishes the bottle of his bubble bath out of the bottom, and turns the water on.He glances over his shoulder, and holds up the bottle.“You been using this all the time, then?Wondered why I kept running out so fast.”And then he adds some to the pouring water anyway.

Sherlock doesn’t say anything more, and John stays squatting beside the tub, hesitant to leave now that he’s here, but having no idea how to ask to stay.When the tub is finished filling John shuts off the water, and gets to his feet with a groan.Now the adrenaline’s warn off, he’s feeling the effects of their mad dash earlier, almost as much as Sherlock.

“There you go.I’ll just let you…”

John motions to the water, and takes a step back.

“You had plans tonight.For my birthday.I’ve ruined it.”

John blinks at the unexpected admission and tries not to be surprised that Sherlock had known all along.

“Was it on purpose then, this case?”

Sherlock has guilt written all over his features.

“Just wanted to do something nice.Just the two of us.You could have just told me you didn’t want to.No need to throw yourself in the Thames.”

“You never do something special for my birthday.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You wanted to _talk_.”Sherlock says the word like it’s something sour and to be avoided.But they’re talking about it.At least they’re talking.

“Listen, can you either get in or put something on, because this is…”

“Oh.”Sherlock’s cheeks pink again, and he strides forward and dips a toe in the water, before stepping into the tub, and slipping slowly beneath the bubbles with a slight hiss.

“Feels hotter than it is,” John assures him.“You want me to…”He nods toward the closed toilet seat where he could settle in for a chat.“Or should I go.”

“Whatever you prefer.”

“We talking about this?”

“About what?”

“About what I was going to talk about at dinner.”

Sherlock swallows.“What were you going to talk about at dinner?”He sounds curious but cautious, and suddenly John doesn’t feel quite so afraid anymore.

“Us.”

Sherlock blanches.It’s fascinating to watch.He goes from flushed and curious, to pale and terrified right before John’s eyes.

“Must we.”

“No.”There.John’s left it in his court now.

Sherlock blinks, clearly thrown by his response.

“No.We could keep on as we have been until one of us dies, or gets bored, or…”

“Or what?”

John shrugs.“Leaves.”

Sherlock tucks his knees up and hugs them to his chest.“You’ve met someone.Of course.”He shakes his head.“Stupid.Stupid.How did I not see it?”

“I haven’t met anyone, idiot.I told you five years ago I was done with dating.Meant it.”

“You—are you ill?”There is an undercurrent of fear to his tone, that shores up John’s courage even more.

“Nope.”

“Then…?”

“I just wanted to say some things that I…Well, I probably should have said ages ago, years ago maybe, and I thought—neither of us is getting any younger, so…”

“So?”

“So, I best say them now before it’s too late.”

Sherlock sits up a little straighter, and lets go of his grip on his knees.“You are ill.”

“I’m not ill!For fuck’s sake, why do I have to be dying to want to have a chat?!”

Sherlock’s lips press together in a moue, but he wisely says nothing in return.

John sighs and pinches at the bridge of his nose.“Listen, don’t want to have a row, I just want…It’s your birthday, and I want to tell you how much you mean to me, okay.Is that allowed?”

Sherlock looks stunned, slightly confused, and oddly like maybe he’s trying to fight back tears.But he nods.He nods, and now John is going to have to say it, for good or for ill, no matter how difficult.

“Well—good.”

And Sherlock sits, and he waits, and he’s holding his breath, must be, John thinks, because the only sound in the loo is the buzz of the fluorescent light over the sink, and the hushed fizz of the bubbles in the bath slowly dissolving.

John finally sits down on the closed lid of the toilet.He needs to sit down for this.Now it’s come down to the moment itself, he’s not sure his knees will hold him, and it’s ridiculous, and inexcusable, that, that they have been everything to one another for well over a decade, and this is still that difficult.

“Right.Well, I just—wanted to tell you that…”John frowns.His hands are shaking and he’s starting to get a headache.Never good signs.And he knows that Sherlock will have noticed too.”

“John…”It’s gentle, the way Sherlock gets around him when he senses he’s about to break, and sometimes it floods John with rage, that carefulness, rage over the fact that Sherlock has to be on tenter hooks around him, or that he feels John is some delicate thing that might break with the slightest of breaths.But today he’s grateful for it.He looks up from his hands.

“You don’t have to…”

“Yeah I do.”His voice breaks, comes out barely a whisper, and it surprises him.He hadn’t realised he was so emotional about it.“I do.”

Sherlock nods, and falls silent again.

John reaches out and clamps down on his knees to stop his hands from shaking.He takes a deep breath.“The day I met you—the day I met you was the best day of my life.There were a few years afterwards where I thought it was the worst day, but still—still, deep down I knew that I was better for having known you than not.You were this bright light…”

He swallows down the lump in his throat.“You were this bright light when my life was so dark I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep on going.And when you left, I—I blamed myself for all the things—I never said.”John stares down at the wet spots spreading out over the legs of his trousers.It takes him a moment to realise that they’re his own tears.He sniffs, and reaches up to wipe them away.

Sherlock is completely silent, and he’s glad, he’s fucking grateful, because he’s not sure how he’s getting through this, and he can’t look at him, and he doesn’t have to because Sherlock is sitting stark naked across the room, vulnerable, exposed, at a distance.It seems to level the playing field a little.And just how the fuck did John EVER think he could have done this in a crowded public restaurant?!!

He wonders suddenly, if Sherlock knew.If somehow, in that infuriating way of his, he knew.He knew what John had planned, he knew what he wanted to say, he knew he’d bungled the planning, so he subtly rearranged it all to make it easier, so it would be—safe.

John’s face crumples, and he reaches up to cover his eyes.This is fucking ridiculous.He can do this.He can.People say these things to each other every day, and there’s no reason he should be the bloody exception.

He swallows back the tears, and wipes his eyes on the back of his sleeve, and gets on with it.“Last year at your birthday I got thinking how we’re not getting any younger, how my family doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to longevity, how the clock was ticking, and how I was wasting so much time, how I’ve wasted my whole life, maybe, and I—I told myself that I was going to start saying the stuff that mattered.And then another year went by, and I—didn’t.”

He finally looks up, and Sherlock is looking at him, just looking, in that way he has, that one look that undoes John every damn time, because it’s just so…He doesn’t look at anyone else like that.Not Mrs. Hudson, not Molly Hooper or Greg Lestrade, and certainly not his parents, his brother.It’s a look reserved just for John, and it seems to shore him up now, to see it.

“I love you.”He watches the words land, sees hope, and fear, and disbelief battle behind Sherlock’s full, red-rimmed eyes.“You’re my best friend, and I’ve spent the better half, the best half of my adult life with you, and I love you like a friend, and like a brother, and like the miracle I never expected because I never thought I deserved it, and maybe I don’t.Don’t know.But I love you in every way you can love a person.” 

And when he sees what looks like doubt or confusion in Sherlock’s eyes…“Yeah, even like that.I love you like that, too.”

And that’s when Sherlock shivers, and his eyes spill over.

“And maybe that’s not what you wanted to hear, and maybe you want to just put the rewind on this, go back and forget I ever said it, and if that’s the case, then okay.We can do that.I mean it.It’s fine.I just—I wanted to say it, because if I went my whole life and never did, I—I don’t think I could have lived with that, and I don’t want regrets in the end.”

And now he’s out of words, and he’s left sitting awkwardly on the edge of the toilet, staring down at his hands (that are no longer shaking).He feels the tension slip away.It’s quiet.

“I know.”

John’s eyes snap up.

Sherlock smiles, small and crooked.“I know.I’ve known—for years.I just—I never though you’d actually say it.I suppose I always wondered if you really wanted it.”

“Wanted it?”

“What you felt for me.”

John sucks in a deep breath and huffs it out again.He has to stop underestimating Sherlock this way.Sherlock’s been able to read him like a book from the start.In the beginning it was a big part of the attraction, until that day at Barts, until it hurt too much to be seen so clearly, and abandoned anyway, and all John wanted to do was hide.

“I thought you hated me for awhile.”

And John hates that, hates that Sherlock would ever think that, hates more that even he had thought it for a while.“No.I hated myself.I hated that you could see me.I didn’t want you to see me.I didn’t feel like you cared, and it felt…”

“I know.I’m sorry.”

John forces a smile.“I know you are.”

Sherlock stares down into the froth of bubbles in his lap.“If things were to change now, how would they be?”

And this is something John didn’t expect, so he’s not thought it through at all.

Sherlock nods his head and chuckles.“You assumed I’d put you off.”

John shrugs.“Yeah.I guess.”

“Should I tell you what I would like?”He seems to be recovering a little of his usual confidence.

John nods.

“I want to start slow.”

John nods, feels relief wash over him.“Right.Okay.”

“I would like to share a bed, on occasion, see if it’s sustainable, enjoyable.Some nights are…Well, you know, for both of us.It might be nice to—have company.”

“Yeah.Okay.”

“I’d like to be allowed to touch you.”

John feels his cheeks heat.

“Nothing like that,” Sherlock assures.“Well, not yet.”He grins and John finds himself grinning back, huffing out a laugh, and shaking his head.

“When you said, ‘like that’,” Sherlock has that careful tone again.“Did you mean…?”

John nods.

“You want…?”

“You.Yeah.Like that.”

He sees Sherlock process the words, consider them.“Have you ever—with a man?”

John shakes his head, and Sherlock nods.

“Have you?”John asks.

“No.”

Blind leading the blind.There’s a kind of comfort and relief in that.

“Is that something you—do?”John asks.

“I did just say that I’ve not…”

“Yeah, but do you think about it, crave it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Okay.”

Sherlock slides up in the tub, tries to cross his legs, and then gives up when he realises the tub is too narrow.“I want to be close to you.I want to be allowed to be close to you.”

“Okay.”

“And then we can see where that takes us.”

John nods and Sherlock nods back.

“Good…Good.”

A silence descends between them.The couple next door are chatting in their loo, too, John can hear their muffled voices through the wall, tone, colour, the occasional laugh, but nothing intelligible.They’re happy.John is happy.

“Would you join me?”

“Hmm?”

Sherlock motions to the other side of the tub.“You can say no, but you’re soaked to the bone and your finger tips are white with cold.”

“Not sure sharing a bath with someone is going slow, exactly.”

“I wasn’t aware bathing was considered sexual.”And when John gives him a look he must interpret as incredulous or chagrinned…“John, all through the Victorian era public baths were very popular in Europe, and co-bathing in the nude was hardly considered…”

John grins.“Yeah.Okay.Don’t need a history lesson.Just—don’t look.”

Sherlock’s face does a myriad of things John can’t interpret, but finally settles into something fond and slightly amused.“You’ve hardly anything to be ashamed of.”

“Kind of not the point.”

“Mmm.As you wish.”And he dutifully slides his eyes shut.John hurriedly disrobes, and wonders how he got from terrified to even say the words ‘I love you’ to climbing stark naked into a tub across from the object of his affection, all within a few minutes.

Life with Sherlock—never dull.

As soon as he settles beneath the surface, Sherlock’s eyes pop open, and instantly drop.John is grateful for the high quality bubbles covering his bits.“Oi.Eyes up here.”

“Rather modest for a military man.”There’s a depth to Sherlock’s tone that sends a shiver racing over his skin.

“Yeah, well—give me a few minutes to get used to—things.”

Sherlock smiles. “Alright.”

The tub really is too small for the two of them.Sherlock is gangly, always has been, all legs, and their knees press together in the centre of the tub, while the faucet keeps poking John in the spine.But the water is warm, and Sherlock wasn’t wrong.John had been cold.It’s a bit of a relief to be beneath the warm water, steam swirling around them in the cramped loo.

Sherlock wiggles his knees a little.“We need a longer tub.”

“Not sure we could fit a bigger one in here.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to move, then.”

John snorts out a laugh, and Sherlock chuckles.

“Well,” he says after a few moment of silence, during which John lets his eyes slide shut and just tries to relax.

“Well, what?”

“Are you ‘used to things’?”

John shrugs.“Guess so.”

“Good.”

And then John is blinking and sputtering as a spray of water hits him square in the face.He wipes a hand over his eyes, and scowls.“What the fuck was that for?!”

Sherlock is doing his best impression of innocent.“What was what for?”

“That.What you just…”But Sherlock does it again, like a boy bored at swimming lessons he’s trying to start something.John is 99.9% sure he is trying to start something, and his brain just can’t process that fact.

John sputters out a laugh.“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?”And then he splashes John again.

John, doesn’t know quite what to do.He’d had a playful girlfriend in med school, and he never quite knew how to respond to her either.He loved the spontaneity, the way her antics always kept him on his toes, but he’d never quite known how to respond to playfulness.He’d never been playful, even as a boy.Always the little adult.Necessity.And the fact that this is Sherlock initiating makes the whole situation all the more confusing, because of all the people in the world he would have thought playful, Sherlock would have been very bottom of the list.

It opens up a vast universe of possibilities, secret fantasies that John has rarely if ever indulged because they seemed almost more foreign than exciting.

John splashes back.He splashes back and grins at the look of shock on Sherlock’s face.He’s surprised him, and he feels inordinately pleased about that fact.“What?You think I’m not going to defend myself against…”

Sherlock responds by pushing a wall of water in his direction.Some of it sloshes over the side of the tub and onto the tile floor, and John thinks about how Mrs. Hudson will kill them both, if they flood the ground floor.But John responds in kind, anyway, and before he knows it, they’re both surrounded in a flurry of churning water, and flailing hands. 

There’s a plastic cup on the side of the tub that John just assumes Sherlock uses to rinse his hair when he washes it in the bath, and he snatches it up, plunges it beneath the surface, and then brings it up again, pushing himself up on his knees in an attempt to dump it over Sherlock’s head, but slips instead, and topples against his chest.

He instantly stills, even though his spine is curved backwards at a painful angle, and his hands are clinging to Sherlock’s upper arms, face pressed into his wet and heaving chest, legs twisted awkwardly behind him, because Sherlock is half hard.He can feel his cock, long and lean, pressed against John’s flaccid one. 

John’s been here before.Skin-on-skin.He’d gotten this far with a bloke at a party once, pressed up agains the wall in a closet, trousers down around their knees.He’d been drunk, and he’d panicked, pushed him off, walked out, and done his best to avoid him at every other mutual function thereafter, but he’s not panicking now.The sensation of it sends a jolt of shockingly intense pleasure racing through his blood.It coils tight and hot in his belly, and makes him press his mouth to Sherlock’s chest, tongue tentatively reaching out to taste the bathwater beading up on his skin.

Sherlock stops breathing, but he doesn’t say anything.He doesn’t say ‘stop’.He doesn’t say ‘no’.He doesn’t say, ‘dear god, please’.He says nothing.

John slides his cheek over Sherlock’s skin.It’s rough.He needs to shave, and he feels the sensation of it register in Sherlock’s body, feels him tense, his nipples peak, his cock twitch against John’s.And it’s so human, Sherlock’s desire, so beautifully vulnerable and human that it lights something up inside John, a fire that he thinks must have been lying dormant for years, just waiting for a breath of oxygen to bring it roaring to life, because it’s burning white hot now, and John wants to say ‘fuck it’ to slow, and he would if not for the fact that Sherlock had said…

His neck is in agony.He’s in the most ridiculous position he can imagine, but Sherlock’s peaked and dripping nipple is right there.Right next to John’s nose, and…He rubs his face over Sherlock’s hyper-aroused skin and takes it into his mouth.Sherlock is slick and salty and when John strokes his tongue over the peaked nub Sherlock makes a sound John is fairly sure he will remember for the rest of his life, half moan, half whine, even as his hands slide around John’s waist, back over the rise of his arse, and attempt to drag him closer.

“Can’t like this…”John grunts into Sherlock’s neck, as his injured shoulder gives a painful twinge.“Gotta move somehow.”

There’s a scramble of limbs, and suddenly John is being hoisted up and out of the tub, lowered onto the bath mat and a towel that’s come from god knows where, and Sherlock is crawling on top of him right there on the floor of the loo.

The thought that they should slow down momentarily crosses his mind, but then Sherlock is pressing down on him, full weight, wet body, rock hard cock, and his head drops as he cants his hips and moans loud against John’s forehead.

John wants everything.

“God, Sherlock…”

“I—can I?”

“Don’t you fucking dare stop.”John growls against Sherlock’s neck, relishes in the way their slick bodies slide against one another, and Sherlock’s hands and knees keep slipping on the wet tile, making his body crash against John’s in unexpected ways, almost knocking the wind from him, making him giddy, and keyed up, and desperate for something, anything. 

He’d seen a porno at his friends house when he was sixteen.They’d found the VHS tape in a skip behind the local triple x and popped it in, not knowing what they’d got.It had been bloke-on-bloke.A rare things in those days, in that part of London.Perhaps that had been why it had been binned.But it was an orgy of blokes in the shower room at a swimming pool, and it had lit John up, made him hard as a rock, and had fuelled months of filthy, guilt-tinged fantasies after that.It all comes rushing back now, with Sherlock’s mouth sucking bruises into the crook of his neck, and their cocks sliding along side each other while Sherlock ruts against him in a frantic, grunting blur, the sound of their wet bodies slapping against each other, filling the small, steam-filled room.It’s all of the pleasure, and none of the guilt, and John just knows he’s not going to last, because he can already feel it curling tight, and hot in his centre, drawing in, pulling up.

“Christ, Sherlock, I’m gonna…God, I’m—I’m…”

John reaches up, desperate for something, anything to cling onto.He feels like he’s falling, toppling headlong into some sweet and heady oblivion, and he wants to let go, he does, but god it’s all happening so fast, and he needs, something…

He reaches out and finds Sherlock’s head, fists his fingers in his hair, and pulls his head back, away from his neck even as he arches his back off the tile and thrusts his cock against Sherlock’s.

Sherlock moans loud, and then makes a strangled sound that turns into a shout, and spills all over John’s stomach.

“Oh, Jesus.Christ, Sherlock.God!”John is nothing but pure, animal instinct now, he plants his feet firm on the floor, and thrusts up against Sherlock’s dead weight, his slowly softening cock, smearing Sherlock’s come between them, thick, and slippery, and so, so good. 

And Sherlock is making the loveliest sounds, a soft sort of panting, keening, whine as John ruts against him rough, and hungry, lets it build, and build, and build until his orgasm rips through him, and he comes so hard it tears a bark of profanity from his lips, and then a string of long, guttural moans, as he seems to come, and come, and come.

They lay cold, and wet, and quiet on the hard tile.The couple next door are fucking.John can hear it.He figures they must have heard them, and are getting off on it.He huffs against Sherlock’s neck at the sound of the moans drifting through the walls, and the loud natter of Mrs. Hudson’s telly, turned up much louder than usual, a floor below.

Sherlock chuckles, and then hums, as he rolls off John and drapes a hand over his waist.

“You cock,” John giggles.“You knew this would happen.”

“Hoped.”Sherlock confesses.

“So why all the nonsense about going slow.”

“I would have, if you’d wanted to.”

Someone next door reaches their climax, and Sherlock arches a brow.John grins.“Seems we’ve got company.”

“Mmm.”Sherlock reaches out and pulls John in against his body.“You’re cold.We should get back in the bath.”

“Not sure I can move, to be honest.”

“I’m not sure I can either.A challenge I did not anticipate.”Sherlock admits.

“You can do better next time.”

“I’ll draw up an action plan.”

“Well done.”

Sherlock’s arm tightens around his waist.“You don’t really mind, do you?”

“What?”John glances over at him.“This?”

Sherlock nods.

“‘Course not.Christ…”He smiles.“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever done.”

Sherlock looks ridiculously pleased with himself.“Mmm.You were much more responsive than I anticipated.”

“Yeah, well…”

Sherlock cocks a brow.

“Been thinking about it for a long time,” John admits.

“Mm, me too.Do you have a list?”

“List?”

“Of things you’d like to try.”

John grins.“Do you?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”John laughs, and sits up, stands up, and stares down at Sherlock, flushed, and damp, and sticky.He reaches out a hand.“Up.We’re filthy.”

“Agreed.”Sherlock winks and smiles.It’s cocky and slightly shy all at once, and John loves him so much it physically aches. 

“Wish I’d said something sooner.”

Sherlock takes his hand, lets himself be hauled to his feet, and then steps closer, and reaches out to cup John’s face in his hands.It’s remarkably tender and gentle given everything they’ve just done.“Better late than never.”He brushes a thumb over John’s temple.“And I do too, you know.From the start.”

John shakes his head.

“I love you,” Sherlock clarifies.“I love you.”

And he kisses him.


End file.
